by Chiara Zappa

From Italy, exiled film director Fariborz Kamkari comments on what is happening in his country. Khamenei has failed to understand that with 7 October 2023 he found himself in a dead-end street. The Pasdaran are at a crossroads, between a military regime that makes peace with the West or mass destruction like with Hamas. Iran has a long history of “stolen democratic revolutions” while it is among Kurds that the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement first emerged.

Milan (AsiaNews) –  What hope is there for Iran? “That the country’s ‘great periphery’ takes to the streets: Kurds, Arabs, then Azeris, Turks... These groups are the ones who most want democracy, the only model that can guarantee equal rights to every community,” this according to Fariborz Kamkari, an Iranian Kurdish film director who fled the clerical regime when he was a teen.

At the age of 16 he was locked up in Tehran’s Evin after he was caught with a book by Antonio Gramsci in his pocket. After his release, he left the country and has lived in Italy where he made various films such as The Flowers of Kirkuk, Pitza and Dates and the documentary Kurdbun - Essere curdo (Kurdbun – On being Kurdish).

Although far from home, he has never cut off ties with his homeland and working to promote local voices committed to change, like those in the “Woman, life, freedom” movement, "which was itself born, he stresses, in the geographic and cultural context of the Kurdish community.”

Today, “those voices realise, reluctantly, that external intervention represents perhaps the only opportunity to liquidate a regime that has managed to stay in power through the police and propaganda. Over the years, this regime has seen its support base drastically shrink among an increasingly disappointed and distrustful population: just in the last presidential elections, according to official numbers, only 23 per cent voted.”

This should not come as a surprise. “While the government persists in its crazy desire to become a nuclear power, the people lack good healthcare, quality education, and adequate infrastructures.”

Is the system really on the ropes? “The Islamic Republic is collapsing due to a miscalculation by Supreme Leader Khamenei, who did not understand how, after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, which he sponsored, the country entered a dead-end street.

"Khamenei's fate is sealed, he will probably flee abroad, while the establishment is at a crossroads: Either it agrees to surrender, giving up the military nuclear programme and withdraw support for its proxies in the region, or choose a ‘strategy’ like that of Hamas; aiming for mass destruction and a very high number of civilian casualties in the belief that raising the stakes could push Israel and the United States to suspend the attacks. Such a choice, however, as we have seen, did not work in Gaza, because the international community did nothing to stop Netanyahu.”

No one obviously hopes that the Iranian people be sent to the slaughter house by a regime whose brutality Fariborz Kamkari knows all too well. When he was detained, he endured severe torture and witnessed that inflicted on others.

Therefore, focusing on the alternative of regime change, various scenarios are possible.

“The Pasdaran, who are not the same thing as the government but represent the elite that holds 80 per cent of the national economy, including the oil business, could decide to make peace with the West, give up on Khomeini’s theocratic model of the velāyat-e faqih and choose a new face as head of a military republic, on the model of Pakistan.

“It is not even inconceivable that they might opt for the leadership of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah deposed in 1979, to return to a situation similar to that before the Islamic revolution, when women were free and without veils, but there was no democracy.”

Kamkari's hope is for another path, “that the revolution born from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement regains strength, bringing to the streets all those groups that do not recognise themselves in the two pillars on which Iran’s power structure has been based hitherto: Persian nationalism and Shia Islam. Then the system could really be swept away to build a democratic alternative.”

The danger that many see, however, is a scenario similar to the one in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

“Notwithstanding the fact that things were certainly no better under Saddam than they are today, we must keep in mind that in Iraq’s case, it was precisely the heavy Iranian influence that largely determined the failure of the transition. Together, of course, with the lack of an effective plan on the part of the United States.

“In the case of Iran today, people have a long experience of stolen democratic revolutions, in 1906 and then in 1979, so they are well aware that to turn the page it is not enough to change the regime but a clear project for the aftermath is needed.”

In this perspective, according to Kamkari, an important role could be played by the Kurds, who have great resolve and responsibility in their homeland split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

“The Kurds have often been the engine of change and democracy: being reduced to a minority in the various states in which they live, having experienced persecution and assimilation, over the past century, they have a highly developed political consciousness.

“Aware that with weapons they can never uphold their rights, they have learnt to engage in civic struggle, creating political parties with a real grassroots following,” said the film director.

“In Iran, for example, the oldest party, the Democratic Party founded in 1946, is Kurdish. This experience represents an important legacy, which could serve the community in a future democratic Iran.”

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• iran
• israel
• islamic regime
• collapse
• kurds
• democracy
• war